Screenwriter and author D.J. MacHale sold two trilogies, a four-book series, and two picture books to be published over an eight-year period to Aladdin via agent Richard Curtis of Richard Curtis Associates. The books include:
The Equinox Curiosity Shop, a younger middle-grade action-filled fantasy series to launch in Fall 2009;
the Morpheus Road trilogy, an older middle-grade supernatural series that tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who is being hunted and haunted by ghosts, to begin publication in Summer 2010;
another trilogy for older middle-grade readers to begin in 2013;
the picture book The Monster Princess, about an ugly monster girl who lives in a cave beneath a castle and longs to become a beautiful princess, and a sequel.
MacHale is the author of the bestselling Pendragon series.
I really loved the Pendragon series. I can’t believe it’s really over! I really liked the way it ended. Bobby wound up getting what he really desired in the end… and I think he deserved it!
MacHale mentioned that he would be starting a new series that involves a strange street called Morpheus Road. In Greek Mythology, for those who don’t know, Morpheus, son of Hypnos, god of sleep, and Nyx, goddess of night, is the Greek god of dreams. He’s responsible for the shaping of dreams and the beings that inhabit them, and is often the fabricator of the dreams of Mythological Heroes. Although his brothers Phobetor (creater of nightmares) and Phantasos (creater of tricky and unreal dreams) have a hand in dream making, Morpheus’s roll in shaping these dreams makes him the overall god of dreams. I must say, based on what I know about the series (which isn’t much), this seems to be an apropriate title; If I saw ghosts and was being hounted by them, I’d think I was dreaming, too! : )